13 Less Known Great Features of Nokia Lumia

One of the things we love best about Nokia Lumia and Windows Phone is that we’re always discovering fantastic little features we didn’t know about. Here are few such less known great features as a list. Feel free to add your own discoveries in the comments!

Glance screen

With the Glance Screen, your Lumia doubles as a clock with day and night modes while keeping you up to speed on your battery status. It displays time and certain other information on the screen. (Due to hardware restrictions Nokia Glance is not available for Nokia Lumia 520, 521 and 625).

To enable/ change the setting for Nokia Glance Screen, go to Settings -> glance. You can choose Peek for display when you hand is held/ waved over the phone (this option uses the proximity sensor but I’ve been telling everyone that my phone does magic ! :P), Interval (timed) for a fifteen minute display of the Glance screen after the phone locks or Always on.

Nokia Sleeping Screen was a distinct feature of Nokia’s Symbian devices, and the Glance Background beta mimics most of the old options. You can select up to four images to rotate as the Glance background and choose from pre-loaded images or your own. There’s even a basic editor with preset effects and the ability to colorize images and zoom in. The setup is really basic and it’s just an additional Windows Phone app to install.

The app will work on the Nokia Lumia 1020, 928, 925, 920, 820, 720, and 620, provided you have the latest Amber update with General Distribution Release 2 (GDR2). However it won’t work on the Lumia 625 or 520 as they don’t support the Glance screen feature. Nokia notes you may experience some issues with the app as it’s still in beta, including flickering and an increase in power consumption. If you’re willing to sacrifice a little bit of battery for an image on the Glance screen then head over to the Windows Phone Store to download Glance Background.

Lumia Black update will add the image background support that is now in beta to the standard firmware, and a host of colors to the sleep mode for the feature. Nokia is also adding in notification support for the existing lockscreen notifications.

Even better, Nokia is adding a pedometer to Glance. A new steps feature, expected to debut in early 2014, measures the number of steps you’re taking with your phone and displays them on the Glance screen.

Lumia Black is a forthcoming firmware update from Nokia for all Lumia devices.